Best Laid Plans: Unpopular Opinion #4

Image right: Fly Away, original quilt by Mary Piorun

Setting intention only gets you so far. Over the couple of years, I have had a lot of projects in the works – writing, creating art, home projects, programmatic development. And then life – and death – happened.

The ins-and-outs of the health concerns my parents have faced in the last couple of years would take a book to chronicle but let’s just say that it’s been hard. It was hard on them, hard on my siblings, and on our children. And it cumulated in my stepdad passing away nearly 2 months ago now. And that has been a whole new kind of hard.

There are a few conditions of the human experience surrounding this of which I have become aware. All who knew my stepdad are grieving and while grief is experienced individually, it is not unique. Others have also experienced that wringing of the heart, the echoing of the pulse as it goes through the body and into the space, moving down and outward and inward at the same time, seeking a place of calm and instead cycling in detached, jagged waves of emptiness and sadness and loss. One person’s loss cannot be compared to another’s and yet I know that my mom, who everyday sees the empty spaces where he once was – and my stepbrother who saw his dad every day – must feel it more acutely. My other siblings are also grieving deeply and in their own ways with their own thoughts and memories and ways of coping.

While there is much more that could be said about this grieving process, I am not sure I fully understand it as we’re still in it. What has been really clear to me, though, is that setting aside my original intentions and recrafting how I spent my time and energy to be with family during this time was the most important thing I could have done.

At the end of the day - at the end of our lives – it matters that we let the plans go in order to give energy to the most primary of intentions: love. And we do that by making space for what is most important, even if it means accomplishing less. Afterall, that’s why we’re here.

"That's why I'm here Got no better reason That's why I'm standing before you That's why I'm here.”

~ That’s Why I’m Here by James Taylor